


The Rest is Details

by Antihelen



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Louis and Mike are brothers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:59:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antihelen/pseuds/Antihelen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of another life: Louis and Mike are brothers, and the rest is just details.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rest is Details

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first AO3 posting (I will be gradually transferring current and posting new works here) and I'm still getting used to the format and etiquette: I've been trained in the LJ method of 'warn for everything', so in the interest of full disclosure for those who like to know before reading:
> 
> Spoilers/Additional Warnings: Some Series One references, but no major spoilers for events. Warnings for references to child abuse, physical trauma and minor off-screen past character death (nothing graphic). The odd swear word.

**One**

Louis looks up from his desk and curses.

It has been a normal morning, before now: an early meeting with Jessica and Harvey to discuss a new client (“I asked your wife to remind you before I left this morning”, “Yeah, that’s funny because I don’t have a wife”), a quick foray into the underling farm to terrorise the associate mules (blue tie wearers were today’s target) and two hours spent combing the financials of a company suspected of an ill advised tendency to misplace profits in Cayman bank accounts.

It is half way through inspecting the latest set of numbers that Louis realises one of the files is at home, no doubt still on the living room table he’d dropped it onto early this morning as he fished out his keys, under caffeinated and only two thirds awake.

Louis has meetings straight through until three, and he needs the file this afternoon; he refuses to allow any of the baby lawyers to know his address, and he has a healthy mistrust regarding allowing a courier entry to the same. There is only one other option, and Louis puts it off as long as possible before bowing to the inevitable and picking up his phone.

He’s back in his office a little over an hour later, a quick turnaround before returning to the conference room. 

Between one glance and the next a blonde man has arrived outside, leaning over Norma’s partition with a familiarity that few would dare attempt. There’s a fond smile on his secretary’s face though, and doubtless a newly arrived cup of coffee at her elbow.

Movement from the corner of his eye catches his attention, and Louis swears for the second time that day as he sees Harvey Specter bearing down in their direction. Louis moves to intercept, but is caught by the ringing of his phone, Jessica’s extension flashing on the screen. Anyone else and he could (would) ignore it, but as it is all he can do is hope that the conversation will be quick, or that somehow Harvey won’t have noticed his visitor and will continue striding past.

It turns out Louis is not having a lucky day.

He can see it, the moment Harvey notices the kid, obviously wondering what someone who looks like they should still be in high school is doing loitering near Louis’ lair (Louis is happy enough for that to be the associates’ nickname for his office. Privately he rather likes the dragon-esque connotations; sometimes he likes to daydream about setting Harvey on fire).

Harvey slows, and his lips move with words that he no doubt thinks are witty and charming, or witty and cutting.

It may well have been the second option, judging by the slight narrowing of his eyes that is Harvey-speak for surprise, when the other man only laughs widely in response. Another moment and they are shaking hands, and Louis will look back on this point years later and realise everything after led from here.

He is finally able to extricate himself from the phone call and wastes no time in joining them in the corridor in an effort at damage limitation. The kid turns to him with a wide smile and a “Hey, Louis,” in the sort of warm tone that is almost never directed at him here at work.

“I come bearing gifts,” he continues, passing over the file that had been tucked under his arm.

“Thanks,” Louis replies, followed by, “don’t you have classes later?” Maybe if he ignores Harvey, and gets the kid out of the door quickly, the other lawyer will just not be here any more.

Harvey lives to make Louis’ life more difficult, though, so it’s really no surprise when he reinserts himself into the conversation.

“I was just getting to know Mike here,” Harvey says with a look that makes Louis want to punch the smug anticipation right off his face, “It’s nice to finally meet your significant other.”

It shocks another laugh out of Mike, which is a helpful distraction from the furious red colour Louis is turning. He’s used to Harvey’s wife jokes but there’s such a thing as too fucking far and Harvey’s just found it.

Mike beats him to a response, with a vehement, “No, no no nooooooo. I’m his brother.”

Now that’s a look of surprise that even Harvey Specter can’t quite hide. It almost makes Louis feel a bit better, but the fact remains that Mike is his baby brother, thirteen years younger, and there’s a reason he’s always kept his family life so strictly separate from his work.

Louis knows he’s not the most popular man amongst his colleagues; he doesn’t have the natural charm or good looks of the Harvey Specters of the world, and he doesn’t exude caring in the way that comes to Mike as easily as breathing. He doesn’t always like who he is at work, or how the people there judge him, so he’s always been sure to keep the two segregated.

He doesn’t talk about Gram and Mike here, or plaster photos of them across his office, because as far as he’s concerned his outside life is nobody else’s business.

That is why Mike has been to the office maybe twice ever, though he has spoken to Norma on the phone often enough and they’ve bumped into Jessica on an evening out. Louis thinks Jessica was quietly impressed by Mike; Mike was mostly just terrified.

The other reason is exactly this. 

Louis doesn’t trust Harvey; well, he does, but only in that he trusts Harvey to always look out for himself. Mike is shiny and interesting and intriguing, and the idea of Harvey circling around him is exactly what he’s long tried to prevent.

Louis has spent his life trying to protect Mike, to do what’s best for him, even if he hasn’t always succeeded. He doesn’t want Harvey Specter to swoop in, and if he is honest with himself, it is that he hates the thought of Harvey taking Mike away almost as much as the belief that with Harvey’s arrogance it is inevitable that it is Mike who will get hurt.

(He’s wrong. Mike ends up being the one, even more than Jessica or Donna, with the ability to destroy Harvey. Harvey is for a long time terrified by the knowledge, and Mike, for an equal length of time, is oblivious to Harvey’s changing feelings towards him. Louis spends most of it vowing that if Harvey ever does his brother wrong, he will rip his head off and shove one of his stupidly expensive ties down his oesophagus.)

“Yes, Harvey, Mike is my brother,” Louis admits grudgingly, “Mike also has college and needs to leave, right, Mike?”

Louis knows that Mike barely refrains from rolling his eyes, instead sighing good naturedly (it was worth a try, even though Louis’ ‘I know that sounded like a question but it was actually a statement’-s have never really worked on Mike).

“Nothing ‘til this afternoon, actually,” is Mike’s response (“as you know”, he doesn’t add but Louis hears it all the same), “but Louis is right, I should go. I think I’m running late for lunch with Jenny.”

Louis knew there was a reason he liked Jenny (she gets some points simply for not being Trevor), and he takes a moment to bemoan the fact that nothing is ever going to happen there where Mike turns to leave with an, “It was nice to meet you, Harvey.”

Louis doesn’t like the gleam of curiosity in Harvey’s eye when Mike goes; even as he begins plotting ways to ensure this was an isolated meeting, he has a horrible feeling that his attempts will be futile.

Maybe Mike would like to study in London for a while?

 

**Two**

There is a photo in Louis’ top desk drawer.

It is of his family, one of the last ones taken when they really were a family, smiling happy and genuine.

Gram is there, and his mom, looking healthy and beautiful and the way he tries his best to remember her. Louis is on her other side, his hand on Mike’s shoulder the only thing keeping his little brother still long enough not to be a blur in the picture. Mike looks about seven in the photo, which is the only reason why Louis can remember that it must have been taken during one of his college holidays.

Sometimes, when he needs a break, he’ll open the drawer and just look at it. Other times, he picks it up and presses a thumb to the glass, as though proximity can get him a little closer to the memories.

There’s only the four of them in the photo, and he may not be able to remember exactly where or when it was taken, but he does know that the person holding the camera is his father. It’s this way, though, with the four of them together that Louis tends to remember his family.

Mike and he each have copies of the photo in their apartments, in pride of place on Louis’ fireplace and on Mike’s bedside table. Louis occasionally wonders what that says about them, until he remembers that what it really means is that Mike is still a college student and therefore doesn’t actually earn enough money to own anywhere with architectural features.

There’s another version of the photo, this time all five of them present as the camera was placed on time delay and their father raced around to join them before the picture was taken.

That photo lives in a box at the back of Louis’ wardrobe; it’s only been taken out a handful of times in the intervening years, and it never leaves Louis feeling any better afterwards. 

He’s never shown it to Mike, and even now he isn’t sure whether it’s to protect Mike from the memories, or if it’s because for all that Mike suffered more than any of them, he’s never quite been able to hate their father for the things he did (the day Louis heard his brother describe the relationship as “difficult” was the same day that Louis put his hand through a wall).

When their mom got sick, Louis travelled back from college as often as he could, but Mike was the one living with it every day. She died less than a year later, and in the months that followed it was like they gradually lost their dad too. Louis had taken time off college near the end, but he had to return eventually to complete his final year, and he did so amidst promises from his Gram that she would take care of Mike.

Gram did her best, but it’s hard to aid someone who doesn’t want to be helped, and it was difficult on her too watching her son self-destruct.

The hours spent working decreased, and the hours spent drinking increased. The first time Mike got a black eye he stuttered out a story about Trevor and the monkey bars and a bet that it looked like Mike had lost, but Mike claimed meant he’d won.

Their dad hit Mike for two years before Gram managed to take him away.

Louis remembers coming home from Harvard and finding Mike, quieter and stiller than he had ever known him, sitting on the couch in Gram’s home that still smelled faintly of their Gramps’ cigars (the couch is in Mike’s apartment now; the floral print clashes with everything and it smells just as much of tobacco as ever, and Louis is certain that it will survive however many moves Mike makes in the future).

Mike had looked up at him, and Louis had been terrified of the betrayal he would see staring back because he was supposed to keep Mike safe and he had failed terribly. Except he bent down and all he saw in Mike’s eyes was the same devotion he always had; years later, Mike would still have the same ability to call Louis on his shit whilst also believing that he would hang the moon for him if he only asked.

It was at that point that Louis realised the best way to get through life was to trust only a few people, but those you did, to keep them close and do anything in the world for them.

So Louis keeps that photo hidden away, and tries not to think too closely about the fact that even all these years later, he’s never quite been able to get rid of it.

 

**Three**

“I know that look – oh god, did you give someone the pony speech again?” Mike asks, and he only needs to see the sly, smug look on his brother’s face to know that yes, he did.

Mike is well aware that Louis has been working on making that particular conversation extra creepy recently (Louis doesn’t like to just re-use material; that’s why Harvey’s wife digs annoy him so much), and he’d feel sorry for the associates subjected to it if it wasn’t so embarrassing that they fell for it every time.

Louis came up with the idea when he was an associate himself, and it is one that he has honed during his time as a partner. It’s all about finding someone with the elusive combination of respect for superiors coupled with the confidence to point out when something isn’t right, someone who will be loyal to the firm and their co-workers even when competing against them.

Despite what the associates seem to think, Louis isn’t looking for someone to lick his ass.

Mike calls it the Creepy Test. It has a number of derivations.

Dave in the mail room has been fired half a dozen times this year alone. It scares the crap out the associates when Louis gives them the talk, yet he’s not aware of any of them ever actually warning any of the new intake when their turn comes.

Mail room Dave is happy enough to do so; it’s a nice break from his usual work and he enjoys getting one up on the Harvard grads even if they don’t realise it at the time. Louis is pretty sure he practises crying in front of the mirror during his breaks; the manly restraint complete with glistening eyes that he employed last time showed some real talent.

For those who have been around longer, Louis has recently introduced the shoulder grab. Even he wondered if physical contact might be going too far, but as of yet no one has actually called him on it. At this rate, he could wander around naked in front of the associates and they wouldn’t say anything.

(Actually, when Louis first got his own place, he did go through a stage of walking around and feeling the breeze after a shower. It lasted until Mike, letting himself in at an unexpected time in the afternoon, entered the kitchen to a sight that was equally mortifying for both of them. They never spoke of it again, but Louis has always made sure to employ a towel since).

The pony speech was originally conceived after dinner one evening, he and Mike batting ideas back and forth. It is his pride and joy, and not only because after the first time he tried it out in public Mike ended up crying with laughter on the sofa as he recounted the scene to him. 

Gram told him off for scaring the children, but if the amusement in her eyes hadn’t been enough, the suggestions she gave him for tweaking it were all the proof necessary to show her true thoughts on the matter.

It’s a bit of a family effort, all in all.

The two of them are grabbing lunch in between meetings for Louis and scut work for Mike, who is currently working thirteen hour days on an internship not too far from the Pearson Hardman offices.

He nearly chokes on his water as Louis tells him about his terrorising of one of the new round of associates; money-ed up and Harvard educated (of course) he has a sense of entitlement that rubs Louis (who, whatever else can be said about him, has worked damn hard from the ground up to get to where he is today) up the wrong way.

Most of Pearson Hardman wouldn’t believe it to see him now, relaxing and laughing without any worry of impressing or being impressed. That would explain why Mike’s the one who helped him invent the pony speech, and they’re the ones who get subjected to it.

Louis is partway through a description of the look of glazed horror in the associate’s eyes when Mike glances at his watch and curses, and Louis knows the kid will be running back to the offices to make it on time. 

He makes a pointed comment about time keeping, but it’s mostly lost in the flap of noise as Mike gathers his things, almost knocking a glass of water over in the process.

Louis steadies it before it can submerge the remains of his lunch, and watches as the hurricane that is his brother finally leaves the restaurant. 

There are times where Louis wonders, idly, what his life would have been like if there had been no Mike. Simpler, probably. Quieter, definitely. When it comes down to it, though, for all that Mike can be an exhausting, genius menace at times, he can’t really imagine his life without Mike, and what’s more he doesn’t really want to.

Louis signals for the bill, and starts to consider whether any of the mock trial candidates are likely to pick up on the defamation possibility. Probably not.

 

**Four**

Louis gets the call from New York Hospital, telling him that Mike’s death trap of metal and wheels has almost killed him, on a Tuesday. His first thought, when the nurse rings, is that it’s Gram, but then she mentions Mike’s name and Louis’ knees almost go out from under him.

The last time he had a call like this, it had been another nurse (Louis stills remembers thinking how young she sounded, even to his own twenty four year old self) informing him that there had been a car crash, sir, and he really needed to get here right away. He had. Mike had been a scrawny kid anyway, but the sight of him in that hospital bed, eleven years old and hooked up to more machines than Louis could even recognise, was still enough to wake him up some nights.

The car crash had killed their father (Louis could mourn the father he had once been, but not the man who had finally wrapped his car around a lamppost with so much alcohol in his system that he had probably been unconscious even before the impact) and left his brother in a coma for nine days. 

They were the worst days of Louis’ life, and they are all he can think of during the journey to the hospital. He can’t even remember leaving Pearson Hardman, but suddenly he is there at the ER entrance and he pauses a moment as the fear turns his legs to lead until the need to just know forces him through the doors.

He realises that he probably doesn’t treat the orderly at the desk very well, and he knows that later Mike will probably guilt him into sending apology flowers, but despite his crazy eyed stare she does find someone to show him to a room down the corridor. 

Louis braces himself as the door opens, barely able to breathe around the lump in his throat and steeling himself for what he might see. The nurse has been talking to him, but he can’t hear anything over the blood pumping in his ears.

Mike’s there. Mike’s there, and he has stitches in his forehead and a sling around his arm, but he’s conscious and upright and the air goes rushing out from Louis so quickly that for a moment he thinks he might be the one in need of medical attention.

His brother looks up and sees him, offers him a smile that’s a little weak around the edges but full of relief to see Louis there. Nobody else looks at him like that, but Louis doesn’t need anything more when he has Mike.

He’s across the room in four strides, his arm around Mike and he has to remind himself to be careful, but Mike just grips Louis’ jacket and rests his head against his shoulder. They both exhale.

It’s at moments like this that Louis hates his father the most, because it reminds him just how easily Mike could be taken from him, and just how close their father came to doing exactly that.

Neither of them even questions the fact that Mike is going home with Louis, and it’s only after they’re back in his apartment that Louis remembers he left the office three hours ago without any explanation and he hasn’t been in contact since.

He phones Norma, who asks after Mike, concern evident in her voice, and clears the rest of Louis’ afternoon without him even having to ask. Harvey might think that Donna is incomparable, but it’s at times like these, with Norma’s understated competence, that he wouldn’t change her for the world. He’ll probably never tell her that, but he can make sure that a box of her favourite belgian truffles is on her desk before the weekend.

Later, they’re both on the sofa with the TV playing in the background but neither is watching it. Louis is splitting his attention between the brief in front of him and Mike, and his baby brother is passed out on the sofa, finally asleep after an evening spent woozy from the combination of delayed shock and pain meds.

There’s a knock at the door, but Mike doesn’t stir. Louis opens it to his second unwanted surprise of the day, Harvey standing in the hallway and looking as immaculate as ever.

He raises his eyebrows in silent question, and Harvey shifts his weight on his feet before answering.

“I came to see Mike.” he says, and it’s on the tip of Louis’ tongue to tell him to leave, but he hears the slightest tremor in Harvey’s words that is mirrored by the faint lines of tension around his eyes.

Louis’ mouth is a thin line, but he stands back and lets Harvey into his home for the first time in their acquaintance.

By the time he has shut the door and turned around, Harvey is over by Mike, but he’s just standing there and watching him. Louis goes into the kitchen and pretends not to hear the shuddering breath in the next room, or the quiet murmur of voices that eventually follows.

He wants to be annoyed that Harvey’s woken Mike up, but he thinks about how Harvey looked when he opened the door to him, and it’s a close enough reflection of how Louis was feeling earlier that he lets him have a free pass just this once.

Louis still isn’t entirely sure what’s going on between the two of them (he doesn’t think it’s like that, if only because he doesn’t think that’s something Mike would hide from him), but it’s enough to have kept Harvey and his kid brother in orbit around each other for almost three years now, and he’s pretty certain it’s just a case of when, not if.

(As it turns out, Louis is right. It’s barely two weeks later, the memories of finding out about the accident still fresh in Harvey’s mind, that he finally kisses Mike. The feel of Mike’s lips beneath his own is like waking up and falling off the edge and coming home, all at once.)

Later, once Harvey has left, Louis gets Mike into the spare bedroom (he doesn’t really know why it’s called the spare, when nine times out of ten it’s Mike who uses it). Mike goes out like a light, his broken arm balanced carefully on top of the covers.

Louis stands in the doorway and watches him breathe for a while. He’s pretty certain Mike gets a better night sleep than he does, startling awake every twenty minutes and listening for noise.

Louis is going to blame that for when he loses the argument the next day (actually, the argument only starts the next day; it lasts for three, and even Gram weighs in when they go to visit her) over Mike getting a car instead of a new bike.

Mike gets a replacement the following week, even if he still can’t use it until the sling comes off. When he arrives home to discover Louis has had a full set of body pads shipped to his address, he laughs and turns up on his older brother’s doorstep with a take out bag of chinese. 

They spend the evening picking holes in old episodes of L.A. Law, and come morning Mike wakes early enough that he manages to badger Louis into dropping him off at the library on his way to work.

 

**Five**

Mike graduates from Harvard Law School when he’s twenty three. It was dedicated enough that he completed his undergraduate at NYU in three years, but it’s almost offensive that he managed law school in just two.

Harvard had refused the idea when it was first presented to them (and no surprise, some of the top minds in the country had attended there and been challenged), but that lasted only until the first time they met Mike in person. After that, Louis is pretty sure they’d have offered to rename one of the buildings after him in order to keep him there. 

Louis can still remember Mike pouring over his old legal books as he brought them home during his own time as a student, and even if some of the law was outdated by the time of Mike’s own arrival at Harvard, he had forgotten nothing about how to think as a lawyer.

It showed.

Harvard was tough, but Mike’s brain has never followed the normal rules, and he loved every minute of it from his first steps through the door to his graduation first in class.

Mike was adamant that he wanted to return to New York, and he flew through interviews for the firms based there. He had multiple offers (enough that he could only laugh at his single rejection: thank you for your interest, but we hire only from Yale: Mike still owes Louis twenty dollars for his bet that he would get an interview there, regardless) but it was only ever really a two horse race. 

Louis wasn’t surprised when Corbin, Castor and May won out; the pay was slightly less, but Mike had been mooning over their pro bono ever since he interned for them the previous year.

He had refused to consider Pearson Hardman, and even if Louis could understand the logic that didn’t mean he had to be ecstatic at the thought of one of their rival firms getting its hands on Mike (Louis comforted himself with the thought that there would be plenty of time to lure Mike across to Pearson Hardman once he reached partner level).

Five months after Mike starts, Louis finds himself sat at the back of one of the court rooms watching Mike fly solo for the first time (Norma had been sterner than ever with her calendar, and there wasn’t a client on Louis’ role that had a chance of getting a meeting with him this morning).

Mike’s nervous, but it’s subtle and Louis is the only one who notices. It’s irrelevant once Mike starts talking, any worries quickly washed away by the flow of words. He’s sublime. There’s a little bit of Louis and a little bit of Harvey in his technique, but overall his approach is pure Mike and he annihilates the other side.

Louis has never felt more proud.

Later, after work, he takes his brother out for celebratory drinks and Mike pays for the first round. The next morning, Louis is still trying to scrub the taste of tequila out of his mouth and he arrives at work to find Norma has discretely left aspirin and water on his desk. 

If anyone wonders why he’s acting like a bear with a sore head, he lets them attribute it to his usual surliness. It was for Mike, and that means it was worth it (it also helps that judging by Louis’ last view of Mike the previous night (this morning), he will be suffering equally across the city, and he doesn’t have his own office to hide in).

Mike is going to be the best damn lawyer this city’s seen (even if Louis does still worry that he’s too nice sometimes). Louis will be smiling when Mike leaves them all in the dust, because that’s his baby brother and as far as Louis is concerned, that will always come first.

If only he had better taste in boyfriends.


End file.
